“Local package management tools install and execute arbitrary third-party code by design and, as such, typically have informal and loosely defined boundaries between expected and unexpected code execution.”
Homebrew serves hundreds of millions of installs a year, OpenSSL and Node.js among them. Trail of Bits found a formula can escape its sandbox through string injection, ride a user’s live sudo token, and collide names because brew used MD5. Its CI let third-party pull requests run code in the upstream repo’s context. None of it rated critical, and it took an Open Tech Fund grant before anyone looked.